Devil's Advocate
by Equinoxxy
Summary: Devil's Advocate def. a person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke debate or test the strength of the opposing arguments. Discontinued for the present future. Be ready for a lot of science and theory. SI/OC
1. Pulchriores Tamen Obscuriores

**"Pulchriores Tamen Obscuriores"**

The world was collapsing in spirals.

Scattered, heaving breaths ran ragged in the air, a sharp intake of air.

And she fell.

She clawed at the air- a strangled scream shrieking past her lips as she tore at the darkness, as though trying to grapple nonexistent walls to crawl her way back to the surface.

Deeper and deeper she fell.

This couldn't be happening, nononono no! The light was fading. The small circle that still showed the light of the sun, the figures of the forest, grew dimmer in a matter of seconds.

Complete darkness enveloped her.

 _Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. Dear God, please, please N **O!**_

There was nothingness. Darkness was all there was. She was free falling, her hair whipping and stinging her face and eyes as she flailed to grasp at something, anything. In the total blackness. Panic increased. Bile rose in her throat, her eyes burned from the air whipping around her, her stomach lurched as she tried to hold it all in, convincing herself that It was all going to be okay, she was going to be okay. But she was certainly not okay.

She couldn't see anything. There was absolutely nothing and- _oh, lord,- how deep was this hole?_ She couldn't hear anything other than her own haggard breathing and the hysteric staccato of her heart. She couldn't feel anything- hot, cold, pain, relaxation- it was all a blur as she was repeatedly burnt, frozen, scorched by the ever changing atmosphere, but she couldn't help but think if this... this absolute hell was what absolute zero felt like- this torture of acid burning her skin and water healing the curling and rotting skin on her- were those... things her arms? She gagged at the sight as they wrinkled and shriveled, bloated and burst, the same event reoccurring everywhere. She was being ripped apart and reassembled, torn and stitched back together. The pain was hell. She was sweating, her head whirled in place as time and sense and space and madness lurked together. Was she- oh God, was she going to die? Oh, no, dear God, no, she couldn't breathe! She was choking, choking on the air, chokingc _hokingchoking_ -

Was she even falling?

There was no center of gravity- she couldn't hear, see sense, smell, touch anything. Everything molded together and struck apart at the same time, the paradox of the lack of color and bright imagery made her head spin, and despite herself, she lost whatever lunch she had in the first place.

And darkness prevailed.

"Darker Yet Darker."

W.D. Gaster, Undertale

A/N; Hello my lovelies! I just want to give you all a fair warning that this book will be very long, and very, very dark. I do not suggest reading it lest you are insensitive to the very violent and explicit details in this book. Nothing will be 'inappropriate,' but please do understand that gore and macabre will b very vivid in this. Another side note is trigger warnings, and that it is not advised to read this if you have any type of nervous, panic, PTSD, or anything along the lines pf depression when you read this. Do so at your own risk. This is a dark fic.

I have said my part. (Probs not that bad cuz I suck :P )


	2. Vivere Unum Oportet Primum Superesse

**Vivere, Unum Oportet Primum Superesse**

She woke up with a start, the world blurring around her as she shot upwards like a bullet, crashing down onto a lower platform. She wretched and lurched, acid spitting out of her mouth like flames would a dragon as her abdomen rejected any remains of whatever was left in there. She gagged as sticky, slimy saliva oozed down her mouth as she coughed out her burning, flaming throat.

 _Is all I'm doing throwing up!?_

She hacked once more, nothing but spit and mucus spewed onto the ground. She breathed raggedly, groaning as she cradled her throat with her right hand, hoping to cease the passionate burning in her diaphragm. Calm down, calm down, calm down... she repeated to herself, the hammering of her chest slowing down as her blurred vision slowly cleared. She moaned as a wave of fatigue and dizziness washed over her, sending her head whirring and nausea threaten to rear its ugly head once more. Long, shuddering pants came from her as she slowly looked around in the new environment.

 _Where am I?_

The forest around her was unfamiliar, tall, looming fir trees cast their eerie, dark shadows on the damp, army green moss that blanketed the forest floor. Creeping foliage and clovers coated the soft dirt that she clenched in her left hand, the grainy, muddy texture slipping through her fingers and staining her skin a dark brown. The dull, partially clouded sunlight peeked through the conifer and camphor trees, sparsely touching the undergrowth. The weather was thick with humidity and the scent of rain, a hazy lull encompassing the solitary forest. She shivered as a chilling, ominous wave crawled up her spine before panic seeped into her again. Where was she? She looked around feverishly, dilated eyes soaking in the scarce sunlight. Her memories slowly came back to her in snailish, lagging pieces as she took in her situation.

 _Okay, okay, think, Where were you, where are you, and why are you here?_

She willfully slowed her breathing, fearful, ragged gulps, though her heart still pounded in rapid succession and adrenaline pumped in her veins. Her muscles were taut and twitching with every wisp of wind and shifting of twigs, her mind reeling as she tried to calm down and asses her situation.

The last she remembered was taking a walk in the woods. She was taking a break from dealing with her loud sisters in the house, and ventured farther than usual. The next thing she knew, she fell into a dark hole that came out of nowhere.

She smiled lightly and sighed in relief through the queasiness in her stomach. The answer came simply to her. She had fallen down a hill and probably blacked out for a minute or so after hitting her head. It was the clearest answer, after all, from the way her brain was slamming against her cranium furiously.

Simply put, she was lost. How lost? She didn't quite know. She knew almost the entire forest near her house like the back of her hand, but never in her life had she seen camphor trees in the woods. Oaks, pines, ginko, sycamore, you name it. Hell, even cacti grew in the dryer areas by the courtesy of a few foreigner neighbors that had neglected to contain their backyard cactus patch, but camphor trees were alien to her.

She moved to stand to inspect her surroundings, but staggered painfully when her legs turned to jelly beneath her. She sucked in a quiet gasp, crumpling back down to the forest floor as her limbs shivered beneath her. Her eyebrows twitched together lightly in moderate expression (she'd always had a poker face, never avidly showing expression ) in annoyance at the weakness of her arms. Oh God.

Her arms.

The panic hit her again full-throttle, the memory of the defabrication and remolding of her body sending hysteric attacks wreaking her body as she struggled to control her hyperventilating breath. Slowly, tensely, she lowered her eyes to see what her arms looked like now- if they even looked like arms. Images flashed in her head of rotting flesh stuck on melting bone, frozen tendons barely functioning to keep her upright, but she shook them off immediately. She had trained herself in (albeit very crude and unprofessional ) field stitches and burn wounds. Blacking out didn't cause one to simultaneously combust from the inside out and rot flesh. The most dangerous injury she could've gotten was a deep gash that could easily and harmlessly be mended by a needle and some fishing wire.

Not counting the fact she had neither, anyways.

She bit down on her lip as her vision lowered despite her mind screaming at her not to look, flinching when she clamped down a bit too harshly as a coppery substance stained her mouth. Her horrors were put to a halt when her eyes met the black, brittle ink characters that were encrusted on her limbs. Confusion outweighed worry, the strokes of the characters like a hypnotic transmission that hit a dull thud as her brain failed to process what they meant.

 _Kanji? Hiragana? Mandarin or some sort of Vietnamese I don't know?_

Her thoughts were pulled into a loop by the hieroglyphic markings that traveled up and down her arms, legs, hands, and feet. She was dumbstruck as to why they were on her. Her sister hadn't tried painting on her recently, and she was pretty sure that there was no religion in her area that required weird voodoo Asian characters to partake in a ritual out in the forest. They were a bit old from the way the ink had yet to fully dry on her skin. Looking downwards, her eyes halted on a trail of ink markings that she'd landed on, leading up to a large, oddly perfectly round rock that she assumed she'd fallen from in the first place. Confused and shaken, she hazardously stumbled to stand, her wobbly ink-splattered legs trembling with exhaustion even though she did not recall running to push herself that badly.

Then she saw them.

Seven, horribly red, mangled bodies. Sickness was thrown back into her mind like a festering, bubbling cauldron at the sight of the corpses. Their faces were twisted into agony and horror, bloody blisters and buboes like warts upon their blistered and boiled skin flaking off into the wind, revealing the pink, fleshy remains underneath. The familiar black markings trailed their tale of death to right in front of the corpses, connecting themselves to where she guessed their hands had once been. She retched at the once-were people, the scent of decay and fire debris hitting her full-force as somewhat of an awakening call that told her she needed to get out of there. Now.

With as much grace as that of an emu had, she scrambled clumsily away from the sight of death, her inflamed legs finding their bones once more as she fled.

Seven weeks. It felt like seven weeks as she trudged along. She'd broken- or dislocated, she couldn't tell through the numbness anymore- her right and dominant arm, now slinging uselessly by her side. It couldn't have been seven weeks since she'd gotten lost, but it was all the same in her weary mind. She was broken and tired from stumbling along in the ever-growing masses of muddy roads, her brown sandals and feet coated seven shades darker by the mud and bark splinters on her feet. Seven seems to be the lucky- favored number. She spitefully thought, Seven bodies, seven weeks, about seven actual hours of hell. Seventy minutes of this heaven-forsaken rain. A sense of direction she had not. A sense of time, however, was something she prided herself on. She loved the rain as it cooled down her steaming head, not minding the freezing sogginess that it brought to her clothes. It helped her think. Thinking lead to realization, and realization, in her case, lead to feelings of dread. She'd been wandering aimlessly for seven hours. And despite however small the forest was for- well, a forest, she most certainly knew that it was not big enough to make her meander for seven hours without finding a single sign of human life besides the horribly managed and downtrodden dirt road that she most certainly did not recognize. The possibilities were limited, but all of them were not bringing any semblance of ease to her mind. She could only come up with two somewhat plausible explanations for the why and how she had ended up in, what she concluded, was foreign land.

The first part of the initial story was the most plausible. She lived in the northern DMV area, a well-known hotpot for human trafficking. It was likely that a trader had spotted her in the woods and took her down with ease- much to her chagrin- and she'd been transported in some discreet way in what she would guess was a foreign plane, since the camphor trees she'd noticed weren't a popular garden tree and weren't indigenous to north America. The second part was a bit more odd. Somewhere along the way, their plane was probably shot out of the sky in some way by engine failure or the like, and she'd landed in some uncivilized part of the world where the inhabitants decided she'd make a nice offering- if the voodoo improbability was to be believe. And, by some idiocy or unaccountable failure, they wound up dying in the end.

That, or she was transported to another world for reasons unknown.

Yeah, not likely.

She almost scoffed at the preposterous notion and swatted it away with a mental slap! That was the stuff of legends and fan-fictions, not reality. Yet, she amused the idea in her head, either to distract her from the throbbing pain in her body or of slow mania taking hold in the back of her mind, she didn't care anymore. She prayed, that, if, she was ever to warp into an alternate world, it'd be one like 'Sukitte Ii na yo.'

It would be better than this lonely wasteland, that was for sure. Her vision throbbed, black burning in and out of her already flat tunnel-vision. She groaned weakly as her blood left her head, succumbing to fatigue as she passed.

 _"Kanojo wa sugu ni mewosamasudesho. Watashitachi ga konojo ni teikyo shita kea notame ni nagaku tsuzdzuku koto wa arimasen."_

She groaned feverishly, the weight of unconsciousness slowly leaving her heavy head, the fever dispersing slowly as she felt her cheeks burning lightly. She tried to breath, but what felt like cobwebs blockaded her throat and she erupting into a fit of smoker's coughs. As she quickly sat herself up and brought a hand to cover her mouth at her hacks, a collection of startled rustles and shocked murmurs chorused in her ears. Despite her lack of vision with her eye closed tightly shut, she felt well enough to be annoyed. Judging by the supreme comfort of the mattress underneath her, she guessed that she was in a hospital. After a moment of silence, someone shuffled over to her side and gently patted the area just under the center of her collarbone- that was much too close to the North Pole, thank you- in a motion that helped her clear most of the clustered mucus in her throat. Before she could recognize the strangeness as to why her arm didn't feel like utter crap due to an IV- they always stick at least one needle into her, what was up with the lack of one?- the image portrayed before her newly opened eyes told her something she'd been denying.

 _Well, Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore..._

Seven- _again?_ \- alien faces stared at her. They were distinctly not American. Or particularly normal, for that matter. They dressed in strange garbs that she couldn't properly claim to be the norm for any culture or continent that she knew of -and darn it, geography was so easy. Why didn't she recognize these people?- much less with the stares they were giving her. They were all plain looking, four men and three women. The man beside her had deep, dark black hair and hazel eyes filled with concern and his fair face was contorted into somewhat of a pout on his full lips as he eyed her worriedly. Stupid guy was prettier than even her, unfairly so. The other two were much more intimidating, of larger build and grimmer faces, almost twins in their short-shaved brown hair and frowning mouths. The three women were all huddled around the final man, the one standing in her of him with crossed arms and a scowl to accompany her short, wavy hair and- were her eyes black?- narrowed eyes. The other tow flanked the man in the middle's sides, looking vaguely alike to one in the front beside their lighter shade of hair. The guarded man was smiling- _ha_ \- at her, his hair falling flat on a headband splayed across his forehead, white hair staining the ends of his locks and peppering the beard on his chin. She leered at them disbelievingly, eyes settling shakily on the forehead protectors that screamed Naruto. Did she land in Japan? Was the plane she was in headed to some seedy place like Singapore? What part of Japan had she crashed onto? Wait- did she even see an airplane? She was thinking clearly now, and the gears in her head twisted and turned at the sight of the ninja- no, cosplayers,- she reminded herself. Despite the mumbo-jumbo objections spewing from the black-haired girl as the salt and pepper haired man stepped towards her, he merely smiled warmly and progressed forwards, bending down and kneeling in front of the wary girl.

She resisted the urge to push away the pretty boy's hand that was lingering onto her for way too long, as well as puke on the man's face. Such things were often frowned upon, despite her apathy on the matter, and she felt he would answer questions much more willingly without puke on his face. His face was kind and warm as he silently studied her as she mirrored the action.

" _Hajimemashite. Watashinonamaeha Hisen, anata wa namae nanidesu ka?"_ He asked her, brow flinching in professional analysis at the face of utter confusion on her face. She gave a shuddering breath, reeling back all crazed questions to focus on his question because those questions needed answers. Well, if she could understand those answers, anyways. Hajimemashite. It meant 'Nice to meet you,' she knew that much. Watashi and what sounded like 'namae' conjoined together probably meant that 'I am' and then Hisen. She had no clue what that meant. Was it his name? _Ah, yep. That makes sense. So his name's Hisen... not a Naruto character I know, at least. Good sign to know that I can at least confirm that I'm slightly crazy for thinking I played universal leap frog and landed in Naruto._ She mentally affirmed, nodding slightly and making Hisen twitch lightly, unnoticed by her. He was watching her intently.

Nani meant 'what' and namae was already a known, anata meant 'darling' for what she could remember of it- the heck was he calling her darling for??- and desu. Desu meant something personal, and 'ka' meant a question. Was he asking her who she was? She almost wanted to laugh. She couldn't very well say 'My name's Iza, I'm totally a foreigner lol and I have no idea why you're calling me 'darling'' now, could she? He could , for all she knew, be part of the yakuza with his oddly realistically armored and weapon-wearing comrades. She needed a name. Something that was unusual and a bit unpractical to make him think that she was the daughter of some poor farmer that had no idea of what normal or noble names sounded like. Something as seedy as her situation. Ah! Bingo... "W-watashi wa... Kakonoshi desu." The words stumbled out as clumsily and awkwardly as an introvert being the star role in a big play, but the accent associated with Japanese speech didn't leave her voice. His face didn't change throughout the whole ordeal, unnaturally neutral even though his black-haired subordinate in the back of the room practically burned a hole of hatred in her forehead. Why Kakonoshi? She had no real idea, but it bore some resemblance to Kakashi Hatake from Naruto's name, and the whole cosplay getup was making her head fill uncomfortably with everything Japanese and anime related things. So, why not? "N-nihongo o amari hanasanai." She explained to them as best she could with her narrow vocabulary, hopefully conveying the message that, in simplicity, she had and was going to have no clue what they were going to say to her three fourths of the time they said something to her. This provoked a chain reaction of shock to hostility coming from the black-haired enigma herself. A slew of words flung out of her mouth along with the dramatic waving of arms along with an accusatory finger pointed in her direction. But amidst her babble, one word was thrown around like an old rag doll.

Shinobi.

Now, despite her perceptiveness, Iza had a logical mind. However, that logical mind was not acquitted with the same witty intelligence that the greatest comedians and quoted-froms had, no was she a math wiz who sped through school like it was a walk through the park. No, despite her social awkwardness, her talents did not lie in the impressive feats that made people like Albert Einstein or Thomas Jefferson famous. Her ability was to call out bull, and read the people around her. And her instincts were telling her that they were not from her world. Everything had been pointing in the direction that she didn't want to consider, but now she had to face the facts.

She was in the Naruto world.

And now, from the way their eyes pierced into her warily, and the same girl outwardly voiced her apparent dislike towards her, it was obvious that they thought she was a ninja. An enemy ninja. Her stomach dropped immediately, nervousness running rampant like rats in her abdomen. Enemy ninja were killed more often than not in Naruto, Zabuza and even the innocent Haku's death in the Land of Waves arc in the series.

Was she really going to die so quickly?

Much to Iza's relief, the white-tipped masculine figure stood and gave the girl- kunoichi- a hard look. His voice boomed out in a tone that commanded obedience, but despite his seemingly friendly intentions to Iza, she was sent into a panic attack. Her relationship with fully grown men was never fine and dandy in her life, and issues spiked for her when a man raised his voice. Those issues came in the form of her heart that began racing in place, her blood pounding and sounding loudly through her ears. All thoughts flew out of her head as fear overtook her blank, tired eyes. Her hands began to sweat, her pupils dilate and breath hitch. She staggered backwards, scooching back on the bed till she hit a wall. Her stomach clenched and knotted, her fingers became as stiff as daggers as she hyperventilated, her nails digging angry red crescents onto her calves as she curled upon herself. Images, bad, bad images reared their ugly heads as she choked on air.

 _A raised hand in the air, the whistle as it roared dow- crying in the night, gross sobs and an uncaring figure walked away._ _Pain, pain, painpainpainpainpaI- The countertop rattles, bolts are borne as they're uprooted in his rage- huddled together. Crying. Hiding behind a corner. Where's mom? She's there. Yelling, screaming- he's coming. Oh God, he's cominghescominghescominghescom **InGnO!**_

A cry of indignation arose from the shinobi next to her that silenced the warring shouts of the other ninja, a hushed silence impregnating the air as the pretty shinobi carefully ventured close to her. She flinched harshly when his soft hand petted her gently on the head, his warmth encompassing her shriveled frame as he cooed meaningless comforts into her ear. She kept as stiff as a tree even as his words calmed her pounding heart, reminding herself that he was a man, not a friend. Men were the bane of her existence, and she suddenly found herself despising them for it. She felt her sickness rising up in her throats and willed it and the headache away, but bike still stung the back of her throat.

She was so weak.

They conversed with each other in much lower volumes, but the animosity that some of the shinobi and kunoichi felt for her still lingered in their speech. As time passed, she became increasingly embarrassed that she was being cuddled to calmness by a teen not much older than her- perhaps a six year distance. Still, the peppered man who appeared to be in charge made it clear that she was not to be harmed.

She was pretty sure he called her a child at some point, too.

 **"To Live, One Must Survive First."**

To all reading, I am basing most of this book off of what I feel that I would do in these situations, so perhaps, in a way, in this book you get to peek at how my mind works and get to know more personal things about me if you're really perceptive. Interesting, huh?

Also, Hisen is an actual canon character from Naruto. If you search him up, you'll get an early idea of where exactly in the timeline our main character is!

Another note, Hisen didn't call her 'darling' XD it was mistranslated on her part, because it was actually a grammatical statement in questioning her.


	3. In Gratia Dei

Seven weeks passed since then. The man named Hisen (who was surprisingly a lot younger than I had initially made him out to be- freaking twenty-) had given me permission to travel along with them, and gave me his blessing so that as long as I was under his supervision in the travelling camp, no one was to hurt me. It was a good thing he did, too, because for the first four weeks almost none of his ninja entourage didn't spend one minute in my presence without itching to cleave my head off. They were unnaturally tense- almost as much as I was- around me, as it still seemed as though they were still convinced that I was an enemy ninja.

I didn't waste the time given to me, (partially out of fear and the other half because it gave me an excuse to get away from the very displeased ninja guard assigned to me) and took language lessons from Ren. Ren, the pretty boy from the first day, was a medical ninja. He was nowhere near the level of Tsunade or Sakura that I would have liked, but he was certainly better than most doctors of my world. He had splinted my broken arm and had dulled the pain that it gave off (it surprised me very much when he did, after all, the amount of pain killers I had taken before I played dimensional leapfrog had rendered me completely immune to it's numbing effects) and healed my limp that I never realized I had. He was puzzled at the eczema on my hands (a problem that decided to come with me, unfortunately) but healed the sores on my middle finger and right thumb to the point that they didn't bleed so much.

He quickly became my favorite person.

Because let me tell you- healing jutsu feels _magical._

He wasn't a bad teacher, either. He was very devout in teaching me Japanese, taking every moment given to me to point at something and tell me its Japanese-bestowed name like pointing at a random bird as saying 'Tori' to try and get me to repeat it. That proved to be a troublesome task for the healer, as the most I would ever do on my own was nod at him and stare at the designated object to repeat it in my head. On days I was feeling particularly talkative, I'd repeat it once or twice, which filled Ren with so much vigor and happiness that I actually said something that he'd try roping me into a game of monkey-see-monkey-do.

I added my own part to the game with monkey-pee-all-over-you.

During such games, I basically repeated everything he said as he pointed at their objective meanings. (And I never actually peed in him- just pissed him off.) But such things only came occasionally, and though I could tell Ren was bothered by my muteness, I simply wasn't comfortable enough to really talk. He had long since learned that it was useless to teach me the grammatical portion of kanji to an eligible point, because it was simply so foreign to me compared to English.

So, I was to live partially illiterate for now.

Despite Hisen's hospitality, having someone by your side twenty-four seven was a nerve wracking and draining experience for me, who was introverted in and out. It didn't help that they weren't necessarily friendly, either. They'd whisper words I couldn't understand and leer hatefully at me, avoid me, an and even the chefs would sometimes go as far as to give me one seventh of the meal of everyone else.

And seeing the fact that even the chefs were ninja, I wasn't going to take my chances in complaining.

A little reminder that not every ninja village had friendly fighters like Konoha was probably what kept me out of trouble for a good amount of time.

Unfortunately, my stomach wasn't keen on keeping it that way.

Ren had been furious when he found me eating the yesterday leftovers, (I had been pretty terrified when I was caught- he was a ninja, after all, and after learning in history class about what Spartans did to their kids when they caught them stealing extra food made me horrified at what he might do to me) but it turned out that, after that incident, Ren had been mad at my gaunt form after he realized I'd been fed too little. He'd taken it upon himself to personally prepare all of my meals after that, claiming that I needed 'better nutrition' when basically everything I had been given was, well, sufficient. It kept me alive, right?

Nevertheless, Ren was insistent upon this and Hisen eventually relented to it after he heard the story of the wayward chefs. I was quite sure that Hisen would have spent more time with me (if not for interrogation purposes, then simply finding out why I was passed out in the middle of the road with a broken arm looking like a cult practitioner with all those kanji on me) if not for his position.

That was another thing I did in my time of peace.

I observed as much as I could with my knowledge of the symbols and workings of the Narutoverse and with my growing vocabulary in Japanese, understood more. I learned that I was traveling with a band of Takigakure ninja from the Land of Grass that was headed to the Land of Rice Fields to discuss trading options.

That, and I was under the sanction of their Takikage, Hisen, himself.

I was shocked when I learned that I'd talked to a Kage and had somehow come into his good graces even when I was gross and very confusing with my speech. I was flushed and embarrassed every time Ren brought up the subject, remembering how Ren had to comfort me in my little fit.

I really wanted to sock him when he laughed at my red face.

But alas, no matter how close I was to Ren, I was still an unknown. Still a danger.

Still an outsider.

And as such, they had questions I needed to answer.

And I had a new web of lies to spin.

Ren had just left the room after informing me that he was going to get Hisen for my questioning, which gave me a good bit of time to look around and think. I was in a carriage a good distance away from the Prime Minister's, but nicely sandwiched between the head and the caboose in the prime area to be shot down and killed if I made a run for it.

Very comforting.

It was bigger than it looked on the outside, an approximate fourteen by eight feet in length and width, fully wood and iron nails. Pulled by a couple of draft horses, it was pretty sturdy all around. I had a simple bed on the top left corner, and a small dresser on the opposite corner filled with simple clothes contributed from some servants and shinobi that had free rags- _clothes_ to spare. A simple six foot tall mirror lay parallel to the bed, a rectangular cut thing bolted to the wall behind it. Otherwise, the place was quite empty.

Shaking my head, I swung my legs that I idly noted were in desperate need of shaving over the side of my bed and stood. Dragging open a compartment in the dresser beside the bed, I flicked around a few articles of clothing listlessly before tossing on the messy outfit. Deciding that I might as well try to look somewhat decent for a meeting with a Kage, I looked over to see myself in the mirror.

My once prominently brown skin had now turned to a ghost wood-dust color, the small scars that had accumulated over the years on my form stood out more on my diluted frame. A few jagged scars atop both of my shoulders peeked out from under the thin, grey, sleeveless turtleneck halter top I donned, thin rails of criss-crossed and straight scars on my wrists and upper forearms were somewhat hidden by the bandaging I placed around them, but neglected to cover the large scar across my right bicep. Black cargo pants that reached just above my mid thigh complemented the look, and I featured myself with a shoeless freedom. The scars across my Achilles heels were no more visible than the others. On the left side of my head in my hair I had placed a hair clip that Ren had bought for me at an outpost town on the way to our destination that I'd thanked him quite shyly but meaningfully so, and his face had beamed like a beacon when I told him I really liked it. It contained two tanned leather strands with a white and a brass bead above a small collection of owl feathers on the end, extending past and around the back of my ear. Brown eyes begot brown eyes in the mirror, a russet hue embedded in my nearly black eyes. Long, ebony locks flowed down behind my ears, transforming from straight at the top to slight waves on the way down. Blonde peeked through and covered the majority of the surface area (much to my surprise- I knew that the blonde lock should have faded by now) of my bay colored hair. It was parted at the right side, and the bangs that hung over the right side of my face added partial coverage for my eye which was just as noticeably dead and brown and dark and disturbing as the other.

I noted, with a small bit of horror, that tattoos had appeared on my back. My back had a bloody, marred wolf depicted on it. Arrows stuck like pins out of its back and swords were plunged deep within the wounded animal as it looked as though it's struggling and battle-weary form was struggling to stand despite the ropes and heavy iron chains that bound it to the floor. A strong, delicate hand lay on the ground, bone and flesh jarring at just an inch past its wrist where a bite mark had ripped it from the owner. In its palm, it held towards the beaten but unbroken face of the furious, snarling maw of the canid beast a shattered orb that glinted off of the wolf's eye in murderous satisfaction despite the tears that streaked its horrendously tragic face. A large, skeletal snake coiled around the artistry, its head planted perfectly between her shoulder blades as it devoured its tail. The snake and the wolf almost seemed deceptively delicate and feminine to her form, especially with the forget-me-nots on the battered battleground (some scorched by unseen fire and others blissfully perfect and unaware of the travesty around them) as well as the red spider lilies that bloomed in small, maroon patches on the black and grey picture on the blood that splattered onto the metaphorical plane. Cherry blossoms were clenched tightly by their strict twine that rested delicately above the steel choker collar that had dug puncture wounds into the wild animal's hide. Carnations and monkshood flowered on the snake's skull, peeking through the empty eye socket and vines with small, unidentifiable blossoms tracing along a bit of the way of the serpent's spine. Ourobourous I remembered it was called. A symbol of reincarnation and rebirth as well and luck, though she seemed to constantly skip out on the last part.

How fitting it was to me now.

I looked more presentable than I did before I even came to this world, in my opinion. I never dressed this nice. Normally it was granny panties and a hoodie to hobble around the house in, but now I actually wore average (for this world, at least) clothes.

I must say, I rocked the plain style like a boss.

Anyways, now that such a thing took up so much of my valuable time, I was too enveloped in my surprise at my (somewhat) decent appearance, Hisen and his company arrived before I could brew up a plausible story.

Brilliant.

Hisen waltzed in with a smile on his young, handsome face, two male bodyguards and the black-haired beauty from the first day I arrived flanking him. Said feminine scowled at me the moment she walked in.

Joy.

I gulped nervously and smiled at the Takikage, making him beam in response. I ignored the ravenette who scowled at me all the while as I searched for Ren, my anchor. Ren was the only one who wasn't swept away with ordering other ninja around or blinded by suspicion enough to completely ignore me. He trusted me enough to be friendly and teach me, even actively engaging a rather one-sided conversation as I simply listened thoughtfully to his rants. He believed that I wasn't a threat, and that there was no reason to be suspicious of me.

If I was to be cynical, it was a situation that made me question his shinobi-enemy sensing abilities.

Thankfully, Ren followed in carrying a single chair in his arm, passing it over to Hisen with a slight bow. He smiled brightly at me, which I returned as he gestured to me to sit down on my rickety old bed. I nodded lightly to his silent offer (or was it a demand that I couldn't sense?) and tentatively seated myself. Hisen placed his chair across from me and sat down, folding his hands just as one of his lackeys silently shut the carriage door. The atmosphere, despite however subtle they were trying to be about it, screamed interrogation to me. The lights filtering through the window had dimmed as a cloud passed in front of the sun.

I was slowly becoming tenser as the seconds passed, only a vaguely odd calm that I always possessed made itself busy by calming down my racing pulse and twitchy muscles. I would have liked to ponder over a believable story to exaggerate to the Takikage, but I supposed that I would have to lie on the spot.

I could only hope that I did better under pressure, anyways.

"How have my shinobi been treating you?" Hisen began the conversation, a friendly start to hopefully quell my awkwardness. I gulped lightly again, tilting my head lightly to him. "They have been good to me. Ren has taken very good care of me." I responded, slightly off by how formal and long my sentence was. My speech pattern typically slurred into slang- I felt oddly cheated by my fate for taking away even my words.

"Good, good," he nodded to me, "I'm glad to hear that. Now, I'm going to be straightforward with you." He stated, extending his hand to take a glass of water that one of his Jounin-vested comrade quite literally pulled out of nowhere. I licked my lips lightly as he gulped down the crystalline liquid, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he did so. Lowering the cup to match space with his chest, he stared deeply into the water that he swirled around. "Where are you from, Kakonoshi? It's not every day that a girl is found passed out and wounded in the middle of the wilderness." He said with a questioning note to his voice, neglecting to make eye contact that my eyes so desperately attempted to make. I gulped lightly for a third time.

I was not a Taki or Kusa civilian. Being a shinobi for any other country would make them have my heads. They could always ask Kusa if my persona was in their documents, and I wasn't going to make a bet that they didn't count theirs. If I said I was from any other country here, civilian or not, it would be a good chance for them to hold me captive as a bargaining chip. I didn't doubt that a place like Kiri (knowing their current bloodthirsty-ness) couldn't care less if a mere civilian was caught, but if that was so, that'd make me expendable. I didn't know this Takikage much at all as I had no recollection of his involvement in the series, especially this Hisen in particular, as I wasn't going to take a chance at finding out whether he was empathetic like Tsunade or Hiruzen or if he was an adoptant of Orochimaru's cruelty. Even Gaara's dad wasn't very nice. A didn't seem to be much of an option, either.

I could only trust Konoha.

So what does that leave me, then?! The clock was ticking and I was panicking. Every second was added suspicion to these shinobi who glowered down at me with heat that rivaled the sun, scrutinizing gazes that soaked up every micro-expression and reaction I made. Even Ren seemed uncharacteristically serious, his usual smile bent into a thin line of focus. I needed to think. Stop panicking. Shikamaru was smart. I had to think like Shikamaru. Stop, think, think, think, think, thin-

That was it. Shikamaru. Brilliance blossomed in my mind.

"I'm from the Land of... of... quiet? Land of... lack of noise?"

"The Land of Chinmoku..." He corrected me, sending a silent ripple of shock going through the small crowd, unnoticed by me.

"The Land of Silence." I concluded, the new word running like gravel on my tongue.

I remembered vividly about The Land of Silence from Shikamaru Hiden, the country being described as an elusive and foreign country across the ocean on the Land of Wind. Konoha was a league ahead of Takigakure and most villages including the great five powers in terms of foreign intelligence, and Shikamaru had Jounin-level clearance as far as I could remember, so it was a safe bet to bring up the land that Taki probably hadn't the slightest clue about in terms of how the country worked, much less on how they were going to be able to authenticate my existence when they had zero rapport with said country.

Who was to say that the Land of Silence didn't have a different language, too?

It was silent for a few moments as I realized that Hisen and the others were unnaturally quiet. Were they using a secret code that the Anbu of Konoha had, or was I under a genjutsu that didn't let me hear or see them talking? A genjutsu, I realized, was not very likely whatsoever. Not with the way his ninja pals were palming their kunai in serious contemplation and contempt.

After the moment of tense apprehension, Hisen continued in his inquiries. "How did you get here, then? What is an inhabitant of The Land of Silence doing here, on the other side of the ocean? Why are you masking your chakra? Like a shinobi." He almost growled the last part, stating it, not suggesting it. In the blink of an eye, something grey and unforgettably sharp whirred by my ear, tearing through the cartilage.

I froze. I couldn't breathe. Nausea churned my stomach. Death flashed in my mind, imminent, unstoppable, gruesome. My life force trickled down the cuff of my ear, the hot liquid scorching my cold skin. I slowly, cautiously, turned my head to see what had caused such damage.

A kunai was embedded in the wood to the hilt.

Lazy, dull pain erupted on my neck. Fearfully, I gazed at her from the corner of my eye. It was the black-haired girl who had despised me since day one. Her ninjato placed just above my jugular, my blood flowing at a lethargic pace that steadily hastened.

Ren cried out in indignation, a snarl in his mouth that made me pause in either awe or bewilderment- I did not know."Tessaiga!" Came Ren's roar of rage as he stood in front of me and held his arms out protectively. If I was to guess from the sheer hatred rolling off of him and waves, I would have been more terrified of him than the weaponry. Hisen had his own hand up, his coal eyes serious and lacking emotion as he stared Ren down, but my- what was he to me? A friend? A teacher?- rescuer held his ground. "Tessaiga." Hisen's low, gravely voice sounded like a dragon's breath, his underlying ire toxic in sound. Tessaiga, who had seemed as though she was Death itself to me mere moments ago, was brought to a withering halt at her leader's voice, her armed muscles melted to butter in fear as his gaze wracked her form. He didn't need to say any more.

His attention slowly shifted to Ren and the atmosphere became calmer, more controlled, but the hidden serpentine monstrosity within him still leered questioningly at Ren, who had become more slack and trembling. I could barely breathe. My hear strummed loudly in my eardrums, sweat joined my blood where the ninjato and kunai had left their permanent marks.

Now it was Ren's turn to do the explaining.

"Y-you assigned me to watch her, s-s-sir." My eyes, still entranced by the powerful man's impatience, hesitantly flickered to Ren. My heart fluttered down in dismay, and my stomach dropped. He had only stayed by my side to spy on me? I should have known.

I should have known that it was all too good to be true.

Back in my old world, I had no friends. I was alone, and I was fine with that. I preferred to be alone, and being alone made me happy. But, I am only human. Humans are social creatures, and as such, we desire companionship. I had pets for that, yes, but I always wanted more. I was surrounded by family, a mother, a father, and siblings.

Yet, I never ceased to feel lonely.

They existed, but they were not alive. I was alive, but I had no meaning.

Then Ren came along.

He spent time with me. He dealt with all of my standoffish, reluctant communication methods. He learned to read whether I was happy or not, smiles or not. He cared enough to keep an impeccable track record of how often I ate, when I ate, or if I was always getting enough to eat. He dealt with the obvious dislike his partners portrayed when he defended me, and stood tall even when someone doubted him because of me.

All for me.

He made me feel like, perhaps, I wasn't so alone in the world. The weight of the sheer hatred and distrust weighed heavily on my shoulders every time I took a step out of my room. The stress of knowing that I knew no one here, I knew nothing about living with them, and I didn't quite know how or why, oh lord, why I was there or if I could go back or if I even wanted to go back. I was horribly, irrevocably lonely in knowing that Ren was simply ordered to hang around me. It was in the nature of a shinobi, to abide in life as an advocate to deception and information collection. It didn't lessen the blow.

Once more, I felt incredibly cheated. Angry. Furious at myself for believing, for even a second, that I could trust the man- no, shinobi.

"F-from the past month, she's shown no signs of aggression and her movements are unlike that of a shinobi's. I believe that she should be given the chance to explain, sir." He announced, his military training kicking in to remove his stutter as he stared his leader in the eye.

Seeing Ren like this made me (for what, the first time in, what, seven -again- years) angry. I was angry at Hisen. I was angry at the whole situation.

I had been living me previous life as a victim of suspect, the one person who everybody turned to when they lost someone to pin the blame. The kind of person who was spoken over simply because my opinion didn't matter and because someone had to take the blame, right?

I was sick of it.

There was no way in hell that I was going to live my life as the scapegoat.

Not again.

"Shut. UP!" I roared, standing up with such abruptness that I shook the bed behind me on its measly wire legs. Ren had leaped away from me quicker than a flicker to poise himself tentatively in an unsure protective way in front of his Kage, the others having done the same with their weapons drawn.

' _Don't think she's a shinobi' my butt, traitor._ I spat venomously in my mind, and would have kicked him in the shin to convey my feelings to him, but adrenaline swept away all logical thought of killing the betrayer.

"I come to thus land with nothing but the clothes on my back and my stupid father got himself killed by you _shinobi_ and I wander for _weeks_ trying to shake off the stupid ninja that keep following me because no, I am not a shinobi and I have no. Freaking. _Clue_. What the inner workings of the capital in The Land of Silence because it's a giant. Freaking. _Enormous_. Place that's bigger than your puny-crap Amegakure and Yugagakure combined plus I lived nowhere _near_ the capital because I'm just a stupid country hick who can't catch a break just because I have squat for chakra and came here with the only person dear to me on this small, pathetic earth to try and get a better life!" I erupted in all of the high-strung nervousness and frustration into my lies, spewing falsity after falsity after falsity. All the while my exaggerated hand movements and enraged features made Ren flinch at what was most certainly not the quiet, listless Kako-chan he had come to know. Yet, I felt no shame. He should know by now.

Everyone was bloody under their skin, after all.

All the while Hisen remained blank as an untouched canvas throughout my whole scenario, silent as the grave with an eerily unreadable expression in his eyes. I panted slightly with my outburst, a sudden wave of vertigo and general tiredness swept over me as I stumbled backwards back onto the mattress, throat burning from all the words that accumulated to ten times more than anything I'd said during this month and beyond. I could almost hear the common humdrum of the soldiers outside the homely cart, carrying on with their duties as if I didn't just break loose all the fake crap I'd held in in front of the Kage.

Volatile silence permeated the air, and silence resumed its reign.

I could only pray that I would make it out alive.

O0O

"For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith, not by works so that no man may boast."

-The Holy Bible, Book of Romans

Heyo guys. Do y'all think I'm making this part of the book go too fast? It's going to be a long book, but this part is more of a prologue or chapter that transfers over to where the story really begins tbh... thoughts? Btw, constructive criticism is very welcome! Thoughts, suggestions, anything!


	4. Conspiciut In Abyssum

**"Conspiciunt in abyssum irent et ipse facturus."**

 _I'm here again._

 _Darkness shines brightly in my eyes, and the expanse is all that I can see. The emptiness hollows my soul and freezes my heart and sets my throat ablaze. The blank feeling prevails despite the distant warning bells in my mind that it hurts, breathing hurts, being hurts. I am empty. I have felt something similar before in the days when I lost my will. The times when I laid in bed after crying into the darkness with a silent wail no one heard, the days when everything just stopped and everything was meaningless and futile, where I existed, but I meant nothing. That was what it was to be within the void of death._

 _The feeling gets worse as sharp pain erupts in the vein inside of my elbow, and then I see it. The thick, black tendril worming its way into my veins from The Abyss of nothing, it's steel tooth digging deeper, and deeper, and deeperanddeeperdeepdeepeerDEEpERANd **HeLPIT'siNME** -_

 _Thorny, mangled daggers pierce through my abdomen and twist. The pain is roaring at me and I'm choking on nothing- I wasn't a screamer when in pain, and I didn't want to start now- but tears streamed down my face and they were burningburningburningBuRNnI **ngbUrNiNGmE-**_

 _I can hear them whispering. It itches my ears, my mouth, my hands. Their uttered words creep and crawl and close in on me and I can feel their stares crawling on my skin. They're all looking at me. They don't blink. Their malformed mouths moan and scream and whisper in agony at me, their melting hands scratch and tear and drag me down, I scream, cry, and beg for help, but nobody came._

 _I stare into The Abyss._

 _The Abyss stares back._

I shot up, heaving and frozen in fear. A light sheet of sweat had doused some parts of the futon beneath me, and I could practically feel my hair coated in oil and sweat. The cold air of early morning soothed away the uncomfortable humidity of my accumulative heat trapped between me and the covers. Birds chirped outside of the half-open window just above and to the left of me, a gentle blue glow that reminded me of the fluorescent lights I favored before I came here was seeping through the cracks of lilac clouds on the horizon. It felt very serene and normal, something I was torn on hating and adoring. It was almost the perfect weather for me; cool, crisp and with a light breeze, just enough to frost standstill water but not enough to conjure snow. It wasn't dark, and neither was it too bright. The blue was awakening but comforting to the eyes, and songbirds gave a very welcome chorus of soft chirps that sounded in the air with a gentle tone that my used-to-be-wake-up-call sisters lacked.

I was almost a little annoyed at how peaceful it was.

It was so calm that I just wanted to sit and revel in the silence, take a moment to breathe, and calm down.

But then again, it was pretty much the butt crack of dawn.

And I was in desperate need of a cold shower.

I groaned and fell back on the lumpy mattress-like bed, letting my arms flop to my sides as I stared at the void, blank ceiling of wood. Pine, I realized. It smelled good. Silence enveloped my small room, and the curtains on the window shifted with the flow of the wind. I kind of hated the pine ceiling. It was so different from home. I really wasn't sure what to feel about being shoved into another universe, because being transported to another dimension was a thing of fantasy that I only dabbled in to forget about later, and I wasn't in the habit of acting out my tale in the shower like I did with conversations. So, I was a little at a loss on what to do, much less feel. I was never good at that.

So, since it was too early to go outside and take a bath in the giant barrel (I made the mistake of filling it too early yesterday- I was greeted with a splash with the temperature equivalent of Antarctica) I decided to try and imagine my way into my old world. I visioned the ugly, knotted pine planks surrounding me into hardly off-white walls, the dark wood below me sprouting white bits of fluff and carpeting, a fan whirling on a never ending circle. I could see the oak nightstand behind me transporting next to the door, becoming taller and wiser and the same white color as the ceiling. But the thick bog of energy that seemed to swim in the air kept my mind from megalomania of a room resembling my origin's aesthetics. It had no feeling, no scent, no sight, but I could sense it. It was like the feeling you could feel radiating off of someone who was angry, except it was neutral in my case. It came from the birds, the trees, the grass, people; anything that was living. I was rather ignorant of it a few days ago, but now it was only a mildly irritating sixth sense that I only recently came to name- chakra. There was a lot of reasons that I could possibly sense chakra. I had a lot of theories, but I had narrowed it down to one. I was able to sense it so greatly as I could (I could tell that the old woman who sold squash was out gardening, and she was on the other side of the village) because of sudden exposure. I had previously lived in what could be described as a chakra-dead world, and now suddenly immersed by it, I adapted and could now sense it and determine the size and nature. Some natures were extremely easy to pinpoint- lightning chakra tended to hum or spark, fire was constantly swaying or pulse in most cases, though water and wind were still hard to distinguish. Earth was relatively easy only because it was a complete standout. Still, never-moving earth. It was like determining the dead fish in a tank with a few different-colored fish.

I guess you could say it was a _dead giveaway._

Haha, I know I'm funny.

All things said, I was now coping better with the nightmares. It had been a week since Ren and his Takikage had dropped me off in a ho-dunk town on the border of their land and the country between them and where Otogakure would be in the future. I had no clue what this land was called- all I knew was that it had the Mountain's Graveyard way up north from here. Never really remembered what significance that place had in the plot of Naruto, but then again, my memory kinda sucks. Oh, well. Maybe I'd remember in the future.

Anyways, the sun began bleeding into the blue and glared into my room like an unwelcome guest reminding me that, yes, I had to get up now, or I would be late for work. I made a deep whine one would expect from a huge, lazy dog and rolled over onto my left side, pulling up the covers and curling into the crappy mat. 'Green... can you take care of me?' I called to the darkness in my mind, feeling a prick of attention in the back of my head.

"Of course."

In my mind's eye, a young man arose and stood. He was about twenty-nine in actual mental terms, but he appeared twenty. His hair was golden and wavy like ramen, bangs framing his forehead. A set of square glasses sit low on his nose, and a red hair ribbon and cloth tie his mop of hair at the end over his right shoulder. He wore a light green haori and a beige kimono underneath, completed with brown sandals. His eyes were kind and soft, a light gold honey color. However, the moment he took over my actions, he donned my skin and flesh like a meat suit. I watched in lazy fascination through my own eyes as Green lifted my body up and combed a quick hand through our hair to assess the nightly damage. He grimaced when he felt a light tug on his own head, and I smirked lightly. Green was a bit different than some of my 'other selves.' He was capable of fusing with me so that I was in control of my mind and could see, but he also used my own eyes to see and guide my body to do as he wished.

Essentially, I was Pinocchio on strings. My own mind and stuff, but the mastermind pulled at the lines that made me move. Although a bit clumsy, a direct insult to his graceful self, he managed to get me downstairs and out to the bath house in a brisk walk. I let him have full control, however, when I saw two workers here at the inn I had taken residence in. I was not very well-favored in the eyes of the townsfolk. I was a stranger who came randomly from an unknown land, and frankly, I couldn't seem friendly enough to deal with them all smiles and happiness daily.

That was where Green and the others came in.

With a calm assertiveness and a confident stride, I could feel the metaphorical ghost of Green possess my body. Green smiled naturally at the two with my mouth as they glanced at us walking by, using a charming crease of my eyes and a wave of the hand. Green was so laid back and welcoming in a way that seemed to enchant people (though he was a bit useless at other things- don't tell him that, though) and the employees were instantly swayed into returning smiles and a set of waves at the serenely chipper Not-Really-Me-'Me.'

It always made me feel a bit like an alien in my own body.

Well, that's enough of that. I'm awake now, and Green wordlessly hands full control to me as he ebbs back into my subconscious. I trip a little at the sudden shift, but it isn't enough to make me fall flat on my face. Practice made me perfect. Somewhat.

Shaking off the train of thought my mind tended to derail on without fail, I entered the bath house. I was the only one here, according to my chakra reads. The only other living souls were the two employees and the blazing, giant depths of someone else in the male side of the place. For a split second, I hesitate. Shinobi were not uncommon visitors here in the town of Tachigai, but this person's reserves were huge. I'd already known he was here when I woke up, but reflexes happened for reflex's sake. I'd made a habit of avoiding shinobi (especially since that Tesshuga girl or whatever had cleaved a good-sized notch in my right ear) that were distinctly not from Konoha. Reason for the matter is that I did most certainly not want to end up in the hands of what is currently known as the Chigiri (bloody mist) or Iwa in the possibility I'm drafted and wind up dying at the hands of a Sannin or one of my favorite characters. The Second Shinobi World War is raging hard and fast, the Sannin are just beginning the make their debut, and I'm pretty sure that Minato's a lump of squiggly human in his mom's stomach at the moment.

...That was the weirdest way I ever described a baby.

 _"Aww, what, didn't feel like inviting me to the party? And where were you yesterday, anyways?"_

Ah, yes. The bane of my existence.

 _'Hello, Hidrian. How nice of you to pop in.'_

I responded in the most bland and disappointed tone I could muster in my head, blanching in real life as well. Hidrian sputtered angrily in my head as I swiped a towel and placed it beside the door as I entered one of the small bathroom cubicles completed by a giant barrel of water waiting to be heated. I blocked out his mental cursing and instead focused on manually heating the water with a provided match. The flame flickered on and off as I irritably struck it against the abrasive surface of the lighter box again and again before it sputtered to life, the match turned crazy-dangerous fire sparkler in the hands of the incompetent (me) spat and burned my fingers as I screeched and tossed it at the firewood.

I hate matches.

Minutes passed until the water began steaming and filled up the small room with the mist. I doused the roaring flame with a bucket of water, coughing a bit when the fire sizzled out, a bit of black smog filling the air before it dissipated in the white steam. I stripped of my clothes, bearing my tattoos and scars to the hot air, sighing when I felt my hair starting to frizz in the humidity. I glanced into the mirror behind me and lingered my gaze on the Ourobouros-enveloped wolf, the trail of portrayed blood slowly dripping down the length of my spine and slowly morphing into black iron. It stopped at the bottom of the small of my back, morphing into a crow before it met my glutteus maximus. I managed to hide the extremely large tattoo with relative ease, which made me stupidly proud considering I was up against ninjas who were watching my every move a week or so ago. The tattoos had appeared the moment I had come into this world, and were gradually growing. The blood and metal trail had slowly appeared over a course of days, but the pied crow had come in a matter of just two days. I had suspicions as to why they were there, and I came up to the conclusion that they had somehow been sealed there. Sealing was the only thing it could be connected to, according to the way I probably came here.

It's the small victories, y'know?

I scrubbed off within ten minutes as the water rapidly cooled off and allowed me an icy escape the I floundered in for a while (water is nice. Water is friend.) as I ducked under as simply existed. I could feel the way it moved around me, invisible currents rippling from my every movement. I could feel the hidden power the water held, its gentle yet powerful force making my body sway slightly under its surface. I could imagine swimming in the sea, a tem _pest stirring the still waters and spraying salty foam from bitterly sloshing waves. I hear the wind howling as the skies shrouded in dark clouds. The sound of the wind whips through the leaves as their trunks bend and snap at the howling wind. I could feel the rivers in my blood and the storm in my heart. I could taste the wind dancing on my tongue, and the fires of the depths in my eyes. Lightning roared in my lungs and electricity hummed in my throat. A cold, empty void was centered in my core, the vastness swirling on forever and ever in an endless stream of subzero ice and space, I could feel it drawing me in, closer and closer as it calls me, and I belong, and it swallows me whole in the darkness and despair wells-_

I open my eyes.

I shoot up out of the water line and gasp for breath, heart pumping maniacally at my episode. I was suddenly afraid- the water around me was slowing down as if it had been swirling, but I blamed that on my (possible) use of chakra. I was afraid of myself. I had felt the void within me- that dark, deep abyss of nothingness that had devoured me. My time in the void was not forgotten- only repressed. I...

I got out of the bathtub vigorously, sliding on my new outfit. I didn't want to think about that again. I numbed my mind to speech and instead let Green's personality take over, a smile replacing my thin frown and furrowed brows and a slight sway to my hips gave me uncharacteristic natural swagger. I wore a dark kimono with a silver butterfly pattern and had a violet pin clipped into my hair. The owner of the tavern insisted I wear this, much to my displeasure as the color purple was none too flattering on me and the pattern was really quite common and bland, but I did not complain. I already caused the poor man plenty of reason to worry when his customers' main entertainment source would jump boat and dart off. I have spent my days talking to he shinobi and travelers making their way through our town trying to set myself up with a caravan or traveling group to travel the Naruto world, and, hopefully, land in Konoha. Shinobi obviously wouldn't escort a helpless citizen (unless I filed for a convoy mission, of course) across the continent, so I mostly pestered them for seals. It involved a lot of alcohol and time and charming them, but eventually they tended to give in after about six bottles (shinobi could seriously hold their weight. It was freaky) and I now had a collection of seals with different uses. Most of them were storage seals since even a severely plastered shinobi who couldn't tell a woman and an underage devil apart still had enough of their bearings to not give a jutsu scroll to a civilian over her head.

Kudos to them.

Nevertheless, it didn't stop several clusters of storage to heating to cooling seals to accumulate in my room lined up in slightly messy stacks. I used them mostly to store musical instruments or survival supplies gifted to me by the wanderers (militia or not) who I had enchanted with my violin skills. It turned out that such a thing as a violin was not something yet invented here (which explained the carpenter and the seamstress's befuddled faces when I placed in my oddly-shaped orders) and thus entranced the curios ninja and dumbstruck merchants. I had already been hounded by traders who wanted to learn the secret of creating a violin and those who wanted to buy it, but a rock or two to the forehead thwarted off the ones who were particularly pushy. Biwa were the main instrument here. A newcomer with a much wider range of sound definitely blew Mr. Three or Less Strings out of the water. It had blown the money I'd gathered as a waitress out of the water for its creation, but it was steadily refilling my poor wallet as the days droned on. However, I had a night-only shift and had an entire sunlight day to spend. On which I will spend in the most boring way possible.

The seals.

Fuīnjutsu was like the metaphysical calculus of this world. Boring, hard, and a pain to understand unless you have an extreme motive for pushing yourself to become at least somewhat adequate in it. It didn't help that I was horrible and all forms of kanji due to how diverse the whole language was and the million different ways of saying one simple thing. My studies were to learn how to make my own seals or replicate them before I used them. In my mind, playing with seals was like poking a crocodile. Why? Because you were screwing around with something that could bend the laws of the world with the simple activation of the stupid element known as chakra. I was never particularly smart or anything, but chakra was a concept that I could grasp, yet could not fully understand. It was vast and unlike anything I knew of or could imagine.

(A part of me feared that it was the void.)

But still, I tried. It was stupid to me regardless.

I entered the quiet tavern and went my way up the stairs, trying my best to not step on a creaky board in fear of waking up and residents. The tavern doubled as a hotel room, and served both shinobi and civilians alike. Kind of like a bed and breakfast, but more Japanese-y. I was naturally good at having a silent walk, but the shinobi customers were especially hard to keep asleep due to their insane paranoia and hearing levels.

What a pain.

I made it to my room without any trouble, and locked the door quietly behind myself. Shifting open the blinds and shutters of the two windows on the outer wall just enough to let some light in the illuminate the room, I glanced at my inventory. Sitting down under front of my hoard of papers and fabrics (who knew that fuīnjutsu embroidery was a thing?), I counted out how many I had of each and what they were.

In the pile of given seals, I had about fifteen inventory seals that kept items inside of them, two of which were differently designed from the others. Two of the total were silencing seals of the same kind, and split evenly from ten were a mixture of heating and cooling seals.

In the pile of self-made seals, there was one crumpled paper.

Okay, so maybe I sucked at trying to be a ninja.

Sighing in dejection from my lack of sealing ability, I grabbed a new sheet of paper from an unused pile and put it next to a spread silencing seal.

I really couldn't understand how to get these to work. I had copied them down to the finest detail the first time (being an artist had actually helped with that. Even if the brush instead of a pencil screwed my and about thirty sheets of paper in the beginning) and attempted to transfer chakra into it. Nothing happened. Hell, I even took lessons from a ninja on how to channel chakra, and on the second time squat happened. I got frustrated and asked the handy helper why it wasn't working, and he just shrugged and said that maybe it had to do with the nature of my chakra or lack thereof. He had told me that I either had such low reserves that ninja couldn't sense it (which was probably what gained me suspicious looks in the first place- what would a civilian be doing hiding their chakra when they shouldn't be able to?) or my chakra really just didn't adapt well to the nature of seals. When I asked him if it was possible if I had no chakra at all, he'd snorted at me and gave me the most condescending sneer I'd ever seen.

"You'd be dead without chakra." He said. Well guess what, bud? I've lived almost fifteen years without it. And then it hit me.

Oh Lord, I was an idiot, wasn't I?

I smacked my forehead and groaned.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

This was all stupid, I was stupid, and unfortunately, stupidity never dies.

My body hadn't changed at all since I'd been in this world (minus the weird tattoos).

Why would my innards be any different?

According to the Naruto franchise, all living creatures (somewhat including plants) had to systems by which they maintained life.

Number one and the simplest of the two, the cardiovascular system. Red was the color of life, and if it was drained from you, you died. The second was the Tenketsu system. It pumped an incomprehensible element throughout your body and kept you alive, even if your blood was mostly gone. Such explained the Plasma Pill. I, however, must be screwing over that system entirely. I, by all rights, should be dead right now. I had no chakra system. And I'd wasted my time with these stupid seals. I groaned and resisted the urge to slam my forehead on the protruding corner of a wall out of fear of waking up the ninja.

I hate me, I hate my head, I'm done.

I flopped backwards and splayed myself on the floor, accidentally giving myself a deep paper cut in the process. I hissed but made no move to coddle my bleeding thumb.

"Take me now, Buddha." I grumbled, rubbing the now sticky blood onto a random sheet of paper. Then something started glowing. "What!?" I sputtered, scrambling backwards, eyes wide and finger stinging. One of the papers, the silencing seal, had my blood smeared across it and was steaming a glowing blue. The effect only lasted a few seconds before the blue faded away.

What.

Ó0Ò

After a lot of experimenting later, I came to a few conclusions. Number one, the seals would not work at all unless I added blood to he picture. Try anything else, and you'll be severely disappointed. It was like using a summoning scroll. Sort of. I couldn't summon anything, unfortunately, if you don't count my little succulent plant Mr. Ukki that I used as a Guinea Pig for the storage seals. The amount of blood didn't have an effect on the amount of time the seals could be activated, (so far, at least. All seals I set aside with varying amounts of blood were still activated five hours later) however, they did determine how strong the seals were. I found this out by taking a heating scroll and applied exactly one drop of blood to it, and the resulting glow of activation was horribly dull. Touching it, it was only slightly warm. So, I added a whole smear (my poor, poor thumb...) to the seal and the result nearly burned my hand off. It was blazing hot, even if the seal itself didn't look much different other than the white ink and heat waves warping the air around it. Second discovery was that, despite my lack of chakra, the substance somehow existed in my blood, which was the only possible explanation as to why the seals reacted to my blood alone. As far as I knew, this was not normal. In the series, they explained that the Tenketsu and cardiovascular system were two separate things, and that summoning sometimes used blood as a medium between the chakra and the bodies being summoned.

So, what made little old me so special?

Not much, really. The ability was squat if all I could use was seals. If I decided to be dedicated, I could learn to do things like the Hiraishin jutsu, even if I'd need the seal design beforehand. However, seals could only get so far. It was the nature of my chakra, however, that astounded me.

Leaving my chakra-infused blood on the seals would have made the stains run out of chakra at some point, but they didn't seem to waver whatsoever. That meant a few things. Numero uno, either my chakra somehow drew natural chakra into it as it consumed the original within activation and used the natural chakra to draw more of it, but unfortunately, I don't have a chakra microscope to see if that's happening, so me trying to find out if it was true was a moot point. Another possibility was that my veins held an extremely large quantity of natural chakra. It is a widely unknown energy, but even I knew that in large quantities, one would have the Medusa effect turned on them. So why did I harbor it in such large quantities, if I did? It couldn't be normal chakra because normal chakra tended to die off after a while. Had I somehow adapted? Self-imposed metamorphosis? I didn't know, and I wouldn't find out unless I happened upon a mad scientist. Regardless, I got started on applying seals right away.

I placed and activated two silencing seals of the highest blood order on my feet, surprising even myself by how absolutely no sound came from me even jumping up and down, and was very grateful that the seals didn't glow. It would be very awkward to explain to someone why I had glowing feet. Next, I got a calligraphy pen from my hoard of lost items belonging to careless travelers and wasted shinobi and, on a very tiny slip of paper, wrote the words for 'hearing' and 'amplify' within a circle of complex kanji referring to the inner ear parts. Good thing Ren had given me a child's dictionary before he abandoned me. I'd have to get an ear cuff from the market if I wanted it to be any use, however.

Quickly as possible (not quickly at all, try another hour adding up to seven hours of this in total) making a second copy and shoving aside all the inactivated seals in a corner and properly securing the papers in my chest bindings, I set out. Now properly silenced, I darted through the hallways and nearly ran into and scared the crap out of nearly twenty people like the Ghost of Christmas Future in my flight.

I snickered when I realized my sneakiness would add to my abilities as the town rebel.

I fluttered and weaved through the crowd with ease that came with years of practice (church got really crowded sometimes) and made my way to the street side vendors. I liked them better than actual stores, mostly because they actually made the stuff or bought it themselves and had no reason to try and rip me of my money without fear of authorities. Avoiding nearly being run over by a man-drawn chair on wheels, I practically zipped over to a jeweler's stand. The now late afternoon sun gleamed off of his wares, silver shining white and gold shining. The man (in his fourties, probably) selling them smiled at me and held up his finger in the universal signed to wait a bit. Confused, I tilted my head and smiled patiently for him while trying to ignore the blazing sun trying to melt my head off. Strange how no one else seemed effected by it. Maybe I was actually a mountain troll, like in The Hobbit?

The man dug around under his cart for a little bit before puffing with satisfaction and brandished two, small, thick silver loop earrings in front of me. I smiled and held out a vertical hand to politely refuse, as they really weren't what I was here for, but he shoved my palm aside and lurched up to hook the small loops on the lobes of my ears. Not really sure how to react, since I'd never really met such a pushy merchant, I waited patiently as he moved onto the other ear, fingering the new accessory. It hugged the lobe of my ear and only looped down a little. I actually kind of liked it. Smiling proudly, he stepped back and nodded his head in approval. I gave him a timid smile back before selecting a pair of matching steel ear cuffs. I wound up paying for both, because it turned out that the man wasn't giving out any freebies, and I didn't have the heart to tell the guy that I really didn't have that much money to spend. He was kind of cute. That worked for him, too.

Curse my bleeding and thirsty black heart.

Determined not to get hustled again, I sped my way out of the marketplace the fastest I could go without dying of overheating in the accursed heat. Knowing my butterfingers, I didn't attempt to connect the seals to the cuffs just yet- instead haunting the tavern halls again and making a few screams sound.

The owner was gonna be pissed, but I can't change the past... in this circumstance.

As soon as I hippity-hopped my way into my room, I set to applying the seals onto the steel.

... at least I would have, if I didn't forget to buy blue while I was out.

I wasn't kidding when I said that stupidity never dies.

Does glue even exist right now?

I blanched in complete and utter disappointment in myself. But then I am struck with another idea. I had chakra! Not usual chakra, but chakra nonetheless. Nen was similar to chakra, and if Hisoka could make his Nen sticky, why couldn't I do the same with my blood?

I immediately swiped my pocket knife from my chest bindings (no one ever suspected anything to be there, and very few had the gall to check in fear of righteous wrath of a scandalized woman) and swiped it across my wrist (just another to the collection of old ones) to draw blood. Using my palm was too painful and took a long time to heal. I applied the coppery liquid generously to the back of the paper seals before sticking them on the steel. "Okay, okay, come on, be sticky...-fied!" I pleaded to the paper, applying a little bit of mental concentration (only a little, really. It was more of a whim than a choice) before, somehow, the seal melted into the metal and combined with it.

Well, there goes the potential of re-applicable seals.

But then again, maybe this wasn't such a bad thing. Now that the steel had been permanently dyed with the pattern, it couldn't be washed off by water or rain. That could be quite useful in the long run. I decided to try the same with my silencing seals, and surprisingly, they molded into my skin like a tattoo and remained activated. After a lot of experimentation, I was able to build up a mastery level ability to switch the seals on and off. My chakra was still part of me, dismembered or not.

The best seal I made, however, was a translation seal.

Seals, I discovered, were like a circuit. The 'battery' was chakra, and kanji and symbols were the copper and conductivity that formed the circle to morph and manipulate the chakra. Lines and the centerpiece were the end results, and in the mindset of geometry, the 'postulates' that held the seal in credibility and kept it working. The thing was, I had absolutely no idea what kanji to use and didn't know if Japan or the Narutoverse in general had the same seals as I did with English. Plus, they didn't have translation seals here nor had a need for them, so I had to start on my own from scratch. But hey, what did Naruto do when he couldn't learn the clone jutsu?

Improvise! On my Mbti score, I got a good score for perceiving, so this was right up my alley.

Drawing a simple circle as a guideline, I began thinking my way through the problem. Geometry was the greatest thing I had in my repertoire of skills for this, so I would stick with it to make this. I began with 'x' to stand for chakra, followed by a midline dot for multiplication and connected them to form an equation with the word 'sound' written in English. I placed it as a tangent line acting as part of a radius for the circle, setting it as the 'rule' or grounding for the seal. I'll call it line A. I began a negative reciprocal of Line A (dubbed Line B) by writing y equals z, afterwards writing on the bottom half of the circle (that I will call major arc ADB) that y is equivalent to sound and z stood for Japanese. On the top half of the circle (Now major arc ACB) I wrote m with the is greater than symbol followed by z. That completed my translation seal. It was designed with the idea that it would translate all Japanese to English in my ears. I frowned and added a few more guidelines to the equation, finally balancing it out.

Fully satisfied, I pressed at my slowly closing cut and used the last remnants of the wound to activate it and shrink it down to the size of my thumb, sealing it to the back of my ear. It blazed white before etching into my skin. Now, I could only wait to test it. I felt oddly empowered by my newfound ability, my heart racing and eyes shining at the magic that I seemed capable of, and I felt the desire to discover more.

However, stupidity is immortal and genius only lasts for so long so I ran out of creativity to last for weeks. I hit a wall on what to do next and decided to just drop the project for now until I was struck by inspiration or I happened upon a sealing master (cough Jiraiya cough) who wasn't swept away by the war. So, I was stuck with master sneakiness and extreme hearing. Oh, maybe I could add a smell-enhancing seal...

Which I cannot do today. Oh well.

I had a terrible sense of time, such being recognized as the sun began setting under the horizon, a deep, bloody red staining the orange and yellow sky. It was almost time for me to preform. I smiled slightly. I was introverted through and through, but even I got a thrill from performing. Especially if my self-proclaimed original songs were actually just some songs some artist wrote in my world.

Thou shalt not lie, but it's not a lie if the person who made it doesn't technically exist.

I grabbed the ear cuffs and slid them securely onto the helix of my ear, squeezing them shut around the cartilage for good measure and making sure that they were turned off. It would not do to have my ears bleed an early death by violin.

The tavern was already starting to fill in with patrons, a few recognizable and occasional repeat customers giving a wave to me as I stepped off of the bottom stair to make myself known. A few shinobi gave me a few looks, probably because they hadn't heard or sensed me coming, but avoided me for the most part. No harm done, at least. My boss, Akatsukage, was giving me a sour look as I sheepishly made my way to the slightly raised stage, but just shook his head in something like resigned defeat. I was a good employee despite the timely occurrences when I scared someone with my antics or me general weirdness, so he really couldn't complain since I also brought his mini hotel a bit of infamy with my musical instruments. The night began then and there with me pulling out the violin locked pad and key and seal (courtesy of a Hot Springs ninja who felt it would be a shame if I couldn't play any more of my instrument was stolen) and all. I played a plethora of all the Lindsey Stirling songs who had been my role model for a bit before I played dimensional hopscotch until I discovered I preferred the darker and smoother, more solemn tones of the violin rather than the high-pitched, erratic sounds she was famous for. But regardless, the hollow sound of Sadness and Sorrow echoed from the depths of my soul into a musical note that enthralled my small, rowdy, alcohol-poisoned crowd. I played every other Naruto song I knew ranging from Loneliness to Fighting Dreamers, of which the latter evoked roars of approval from the younger and shinobi sections of the customers. After an hour and a half, my hands were becoming cramped and my wrists tired, so I placed the Violin back into its chest in favor of talking to merchants.

But unfortunately, my skills at being a social bee were rated an F. I just awkwardly shuffled around until my eye caught someone else's. He had green eyes and strawberry blonde hair, fair skin and a kind face. We locked gazes and my stomach instantly became a pit of dragonflies screaming bloody murder as he smiled at me and waved over. I was panicking as I gave him a wobbly smile, my strides choppy and fearful. However, a simple switch turned my fretful smile to a charming grin and my steps became welcoming and confident. And I watched this all through the window of my eyes. Green was not behind this- he was far too formal for this kind of atmosphere. It must be Fenryl, a feminine persona that came out when it was time to actually behave like my age.

Fenryl's grin grew more wolfish as we neared him, her teenage mindset humming in approval of the, while average, not bad-looking and apparently well taken care of man. I felt the urge to grimace in embarrassment and smack myself just to offend Fenryl, but I had no control at the moment. Unless I really wanted it, of course. I was never fully out of control.

"Hello." Fenryl purred to him, sitting down on the chair directly across from him and placing an elbow and forearm on the table. He raised an eyebrow in what seemed an approving appraisal and smirked. "Hello to you, as well. What gives me the pleasure of such a talented lady's attention on little old me?" He hummed back, leaning forward onto the table to match Fenryl's bold standing. While I inwardly danced and sang that my seal gave perfect translation, Fenryl's grin only grew wider and her eyes twinkled with determination and resolve. "You see, now, I'm in the search to join a merchant group or caravan, and from what I can see, you've got yourself in a good one, from the way you're dressed." She eyed over his silk kimono, silver and red and all sorts of prestige. "Of course, I'm willing to offer my services as a musician and help as a laborer, at the mere cost of ten yen a day, passage within the carriages, and food just as much as he other workers are given. If that is fulfilled, I'll sing and play as a songbird to you and your men's content." Fenryl announced, sitting tall and proud as she steadied her proclamation with the merchant who only seemed to grow more amused the longer she went on. Until, at the very end, he burst with roaring laughter that sent his head back as he clutched at his chest. All of Fenryl's swagger slowly faded at his north and was replaced by my withering form, the almost spell-like experience having been broken. I could hear her huff in embarrassment in the back of my mind, but I was apathetic to her behumblement as she was the one who abandoned me after she took initiative by herself in the first place. We got a few looks from the other customers, and I blushed as I avoided looking at them while he calmed down.

"It's been a long time since someone's made me laugh that hard. Your bluntness is appreciated, but I'm afraid I'm in no need of a new worker right now, so I'm going to have to say that I can't comply." I frowned and sighed, feeling like disappointment had just come over for a sleepover into my life. "But I do find you rather interesting. Your name?" He inquired smiling kindly even though I could see the humor in his eyes at my blatant dismay. I shook my head and held out my hand, giving him a tired grin. "Masamune Kakonoshi. Hajimemashite." I greeted as he took my hand, giving it a firm, single shake. "Nobunaga Haruno, at your service."

Oh. Haruno, that's a nice surname.

OH WAIT WHAT.

I was in the Second War times. If I was correct in my reasoning, this dude had to be Sakura Haruno's grandfather. I was absolutely flabbergasted and if it was evident on my face, Nobunaga took notice of it. "Is something the matter?" He asked, tilting his head. Oh. "A-ah, yes, you see, I just- uh," WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY!? "you see, I'm a bit of a... an oracle."

Oh, would you look at that. I'm a genius.

His eyebrows raise to his hairline, but instead of looking at me like I'd grown a second head, he gained a sheen of interest in his gaze. "Oh, really? Did you see anything about me?" I blinked at him. Uhh..? "You believe me?" The words came out before I could stop them, but he just responded patiently to me. "No one comes out with something like that on a whim, not people like you. You may be able to fake confidence, but it's plain as day that you aren't stupid and that, if not true, you would have never made such a claim. Now, on the matter of my future?"

I could see where Sakura got her intelligence from.

But now, I actually had a chance to use this to my advantage. This guy was rich, from the way he was dressed and the fact that the Haruno had once been a merchant clan. A little bit of yen sent to a poor, wanderlusting child wouldn't hurt him, right? Not without a little something to gain, of course.

"Well... I could tell you a few things... at a price, of course." I slowly drawled, much more cautious of the somewhat stranger now that Fenryl was back grumbling in the pits of my subconscious. He seemed unaffected by this, and simply swished a glass of wine around in his hand in contemplation. "Of course. Nothing too grand, of course, something little perhaps. What did you want?" He questioned me, verdant orbs trained on the wine red sea held in his hands. I knew exactly what I wanted. "A genin escort team. To the land of Water and it's Hidden Village." My first goal was to see if Kisame was alive. I really want to see if I can spark his life a bit- he was a good person deep down and I want to see if I can save a little bit of that. A single salmon eyebrow quirked at my odd request, and I could only hope he would comply. The Hidden Villages were at war, but there were plenty of rogue genin and low-price chunin in the world, so perhaps it wasn't quite so unreasonable. He smiled once again in a satisfied way and he set down his glass. "Of course. I know exactly who to commission for you." He announced, and my spirits soared. I grinned and relaxed for the first time since Fenryl left.

"Well, boy do I have a bit to tell you. You see, one of your descendants is going to be able to split the earth with her pinky finger..."

O0O

"Look for Darkness, and it is all you will see."

-Iroh, Legends of Korra

So. Freaking. LONG. And a bit weird. But I can say that it is so for a good reason. This is a self-insert. Now, you may be asking why I am telling you this and repeating what you already know. But, as a self insert, I am shoved into the story, and so are my problems. The people in my head are one of them. Don't hesitate to ask about them, please. Anyways, vote and comment as always! I like talking to you guys.

 **Bonus Fact; I actually do own a plant named Mr. Ukki, dubbed after Sakura's cactus plant from one of my favorite one-shot KakaSaku authors.**

Also, any thoughts on the new writing style?

Constructive criticism is very appreciated!

Any questions? Future possibilities you'd like to conspire? Write 'em all in the comments! :D

 **Also...**

 **LOOKING. FOR. BETAAAAA!!!!**


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